


Footprints In The Snow

by mikaylalwrites



Series: The Adventures Of The Fall Out Friends [2]
Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Antarctica, Mania, Mania Tour, friends - Freeform, penguin!joe, polar bear!andy, seal!patrick, snowy day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-06-21 09:52:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15555141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mikaylalwrites/pseuds/mikaylalwrites
Summary: A lone penguin slid down the slippery slopes up ahead. That wasn’t the off part of course. The odd part was that the penguin had brown curls. It looked like it had a wig on its head. Pete laughed, what a sight to see! Pete stared back at the crew. They were too caught up in their samples. Besides, they wouldn’t need Pete to write down data until they had fully tested it. He headed with his hands in his pockets toward the slopes. By the time Pete arrived at the slopes, the penguin was already gone.---Based on the "A Snowy Day" drawings by l3earfat.





	Footprints In The Snow

**Author's Note:**

> This is a birthday gift for my favorite artist, Vicky @l3earfat on Twitter and Tumblr. I hope she likes it and anyone else who reads it has a good time too. 
> 
> Her cute artwork is here: http://l3earfat.tumblr.com/post/174503341954/how-can-i-called-them-and-pete-as-human

Pete hadn’t meant to end up in this position. When an old classmate from college had said he had a “paid internship” for him, this isn’t what Pete had imagined. He imagined a cubicle and maybe buying expensive lattes for workers, not three-inch-thick mittens and potential frostbite. Elliot, his classmate, had said that the internship dealt with helping scientists with their research. He didn’t lie, that was the job but Antarctica hadn’t been a part of the deal. Pete promised Elliot he’d do it without asking where the job was or what it entailed. Pete muttered under his breath. He was a complete idiot. His thick yellow coat kept him warm enough but he was still terrified of freezing to death. Today’s task was collecting samples from the below freezing water just outside of the research station. Other interns got warm coffee and paperwork, Pete got snowy treks and wet mittens. No wonder everyone ditched Elliot on taking this job. While the actual scientists took out their fancy equipment, Pete stared at the snowy hills on the horizon. He wondered how much fun sledding down the hills would be like when he spotted something very odd. 

A lone penguin slid down the slippery slopes up ahead. That wasn’t the off part of course. The odd part was that the penguin had brown curls. It looked like it had a wig on its head. Pete laughed, what a sight to see! Pete stared back at the crew. They were too caught up in their samples. Besides, they wouldn’t need Pete to write down data until they had fully tested it. He headed with his hands in his pockets toward the slopes. By the time Pete arrived at the slopes, the penguin was already gone. Pete tightened his hood. Somehow it was colder out here than it was by the research station. There’s no point in getting frostbite. Pete thought to himself before walking back towards the scientists. None of them questioned Pete when he got back. They all knew Pete didn’t enjoy this job. 

The research station was almost completely self-sustainable. Except for growing food. Shipments came in every two weeks or so. A lot of it was canned since the power grid wasn’t perfect in a place that was nearly uninhabited. Pete liked sitting on his bed with a bag of chips after a long day of freezing his ass off. The feeling of taking his heavy jacket off was relieving. He flopped onto his bed with his favorite bag of chips and sighed. What an odd summer job he’d gotten himself into. This kind of volunteer work looked amazing on resumes but he’d rather be somewhere tropical. It was only June and this was a full summer job. He had no other options. No one wanted to hire a possible murder. Nah. He was happily munching on a chip when he saw something moving through the hallway. Or rather, waddle. Pete shot up off his bed and followed the creature through the hallway. The creature was fast. Pete didn’t catch it until he was outside the research station. His legs shivered as he grabbed the creature by its mess of curls. Pete hopped back into the building before his legs turned into icicles. The creature, he noticed, was the penguin he saw on the slopes earlier. Only now, the penguin was holding a bag of Doritos in its beak. Pete pulled the penguin by its hair until they were eye-level with each other. 

“Ow! Ow!” the penguin cried. “Come on man, I’m hungry. Just let me have my chips.” Pete screamed and dropped the penguin and its bag of chips onto the floor. The penguin rubbed its butt with its flipper. “Ouch, that hurts. How would you like it if I dropped you onto your ass?” Pete pointed at the penguin in shock.   
“You- you can talk!” He exclaimed. Pete looked around, making sure no one had heard him. He didn’t want to sound like a madman. “How?” The penguin muttered under its breath. 

“I’m Joe, thanks for asking,” the penguin, Joe, said. Pete couldn’t wrap his head around it. Was he a science experiment gone wrong? Was this normal? What in the world is going on? “Dude, you look like you’ve seen a ghost. You haven’t seen a talking penguin before?” 

Pete shook his head. “I can’t say I have. Uh, I’m Pete Wentz.” Pete scratched the back of his head. “Are there any more talking animals I should know about?” 

“We all can talk. Hey, I guess those Disney movies weren’t that far off,” Joe said. “Don’t tell anyone I took the chips. They hate it when I do that. Bye!” Joe sailed down the slope heading out of the research station on his belly. The chips were locked tightly in his beak. Pete rubbed his eyes. 

For a few minutes, he convinced himself that he was hallucinating and that none of that happened. Until he woke up to a peck to the face, that is. Pete cursed until his breath and felt his cheek. A drop of blood came off on his thumb. That stupid penguin sat on his chest with a smug look in his eyes. In the corner of the room was a large polar bear. Pete grabbed his blankets and sat up immediately. The polar bear was a lot scarier than the penguin. It was a bear with claws for Pete’s sake! The polar bear didn’t make a move to attack Pete. He stood in the corner with dark sunglasses over his eyes. 

“Don’t be scared of him, that’s Andy,” Joe said. He waved like he was talking about a monarch butterfly and not a dangerous animal known to attack if threatened. Pete rubbed his eyes. What did they want anyway? “Fish. We want the bucket of fish you guys are testing on. Doritos are delicious but I need real food.” Pete sat up further. 

“You want me to steal from the only people paying me money?” Pete asked. He looked at the digital clock on his bedside table. 5:00 am. Pete groaned. It was too early to be up. Joe nodded and pecked his back. “Ow! Ow! Fine, I’ll do it.” If penguins could give shit-eating grins, Joe would be doing just that right now. Pete slid out of bed onto his feet. His vision was still a bit blurry as he put on a pair of heat-insulated pants and a t-shirt. The group wouldn’t be going out into the bitter cold until later. The work day for most people here started bright and early so getting past them and into where they were keeping the fish was going to be a bit of a challenge. The door wasn’t locked, it didn’t really need to be all the way out here. Even though it was only 5 am, this lab already had three scientists in it. 

Luckily for Pete, they weren’t studying the fish samples. He walked casually by them. He didn’t need to sneak around just yet. When the scientists had their backs turned, Pete grabbed the bucket and someone’s jacket and raced out the back door. He ran quickly, kicking the freezing snow from yesterday’s snowfall onto his boots. Joe and the polar bear, Andy, were sitting at the front waiting for Pete. When had he become the errand boy to two Antarctic animals? Pete put down the bucket in front of them and hoped they were satisfied. The scientists would have his head on a stick if they found out he gave the animals their sample. Joe stood up and started waddling to an icy rock in the middle of the water. He jumped into the freezing ocean, causing Pete to involuntarily shiver. Joe swam to the block of ice and jumped onto it. Until this point, Pete hadn’t noticed that the top of the rock had a hat and that hat was covering strawberry blonde hair. Joe started smacking the rock with his flipper telling it to wake up. The rock, to Pete’s surprise, started groaning. At this point, Pete wondered why he was even surprised at anything anymore. The rock blinked and cursed at Joe. It gave up and flopped into the freezing water. When it arrived at the other side, Pete realized that it was a seal. A seal with a wet hat, wet hair, and wet black-rimmed glasses. The seal wiped the water off its glasses and yawned. 

“A seal with bad eyesight? This place gets weirder by the minute,” Pete said. The seal eyed him. “Calm down. I’m just making an observation.” The seal nearly closed its eyes and fell back asleep before Joe it slapped it in the face again. The seal grumbled and opened its eyes. “That is one grumpy seal.” Joe took a fish out of the bucket and swallowed it whole. Pete turned around. If he had to see Joe throw up the bones, he’d vomit. 

“Patrick’s only grumpy if you wake him up too early,” Joe explained. “I have rocks. You can turn back around, Pete.” Pete wasn’t all that knowledgeable about penguin eating habits so he wasn’t sure what Joe having rocks had to do with anything. “It helps grind the fish bones in my stomach.” Oh. Pete turned around to face Joe, Andy, and Patrick. Patrick was happily eating a fish when it occurred to Pete. 

“Andy,” Pete said, pointing at the polar bear. “Why haven’t you eaten Patrick yet?” Andy laughed awkwardly. Joe and Patrick stopped eating to look at each other. “Polar bears live off seals.” 

“We have somewhat of an agreement,” Andy answered. “I’m allowed to eat any other seal but Patrick. It’s weird eating seals when one of your friends is a seal. We don’t talk about it.” Okay then. Joe and Patrick continue eating the fish, Andy says he has to do something important, and Pete returns back to the lab. As soon as he enters the door, there’s a commotion. Elliot rushed towards Pete in a huff. 

“Where have you been?” Elliot asked annoyedly. “That stupid trio of animals stole our fish sample again. Who keeps letting them in here?” Pete tried to keep a blank look on his face. For some reason, he was an expert at looking emotionless. Elliot looked like he was going to boil over when Pete said he had no clue what he was talking about. He ran off, probably to give another intern the third degree. 

After that incident, the group of scientists had to go out and collect more samples, much to Pete’s dismay. 

\---

Pete hadn’t seen Joe, Andy, and Patrick for a week or two. His job had gone back to the usual boring routine. He found himself missing Joe and his annoying pecking. Pete was sat at his desk, recording data. He didn’t really have an interest in the pH of the seawater over time. This was one of many tests was to make sure nothing was harming the balance of the water. Pete heard a loud crash. Pete shot up out of his seat and exited the lab into the hallway. All he saw was a flipper but he knew who it was, Joe. The scientists tried chasing Joe out of the building but he slid on his belly down the slope. Pete got a glimpse of him on his way out. He had a vial in his beak this time. 

“What did he take?” Pete asked Elliot later that day. Elliot sits in his spinning chair, staring at Pete. He motions to the chair at the front of his desk. 

“I think I have a story to tell you, Pete,” Elliot said. Pete sits down in the chair. “The seal, Patrick, the polar bear, Andy, and the penguin, Joe, weren’t always animals. I can imagine that you’ve been wondering why they have human hair, hats, and glasses. They were a band. I think you might know them, Pete. Don’t their names ring a bell?” Pete nods. He hadn’t wanted to think about it. That accident had been three years ago now. “I thought so. Pete, I brought you to do this internship because I needed you to know, your friends, they’re alive.” Pete didn’t believe it. This was a sick joke. His bandmates died years ago in an explosion. He remembered every moment before that concert as if it was yesterday. 

\----  
It was the last date of the second round of the US Mania tour. They were in New Orleans. Just like any other concert, they were sound checking their instruments. Pete didn’t know where it had come from or why it hadn’t killed him. There was a loud boom. Every one of his bandmates screamed. Pete hadn’t felt a thing. They collapsed on the floor. It looked like they were joking on air. Someone called 911 but it was too late. They all took their last breath that day. 

Pete could still remember their funerals. The paparazzi followed him to each one. They asked him how he felt. They asked him why he hadn’t died. They asked him if he had done it. That was a popular rumor among all the other bullshit ones. Rumor had it that Pete Wentz himself had killed his bandmates. Pete couldn’t have been more crushed to know that was what people believed. Even some fans believed it. What fans they were, Pete would mutter to himself. 

Pete didn’t do anything for months. He blamed himself sometimes, he continued to for two years after that. He wanted to know what caused the explosion and why it only hurt his friends. He spent years working at whatever places would hire him, never getting answers. When he got this internship, he took it. No one would think he was a killer in Antarctica. 

\---  
Pete slammed Elliot’s office door behind him. He was a bastard. A disgusting, emotionless, bastard. How could he do this to him? Give him an internship just to pull a prank like this. How did he train those animals to talk? Did he give them featured that looked like his friends for some sick joke? Pete threw the door to the research facility open. He fell onto his knees into the freezing snow. His jacket-less torso shook as he cried into the bitter cold outside. He felt the woven fabric of mitten touch his freezing shoulder. 

“Pete-” Pete recognized the voice as Elliot’s. “Pete, come back inside before you freeze to death.” Pete wasn’t going anywhere. Who was going to care if he froze to death? He dried his eyes but he stayed put in the snow. Elliot pulled him up by his hand, then spun him around to face him. “Pete, I swear to God, if you don’t come back inside, I’ll drag your sorry ass in there by your ear.” Pete came back inside and sat on the bench towards the entrance. “This is going to sound crazy but I promise you, it’s the truth. Those animals are your friends. That explosion, it wasn’t an explosive. It was a chemical mixture that we were testing in a lab a few states over. I was the head of the research project. The mixture was supposed to extend human life by a few years. It was going to be used to slow the rate at which cells burn because of oxygen. It was stolen from us mid-development. The person who did it confessed three years ago.” Pete was furious. All those years of no answers and being blamed by the media and these people had known who had done it. 

“Why wasn’t there a news story? Something to clear my name. Why didn’t I-” 

Elliot cut him off. “We couldn’t let the public know what had happened until we could fix it. The chemical mixture wasn’t fast acting. Your friends had a terrible time transforming from humans to animals. That’s why they cause so much havoc here. They know that I’m part of the reason all this happened and they don’t want fish, they want the cure. We’ve been developing it since the accident. That’s part of your job. We just couldn’t let you know that yet. So, if you’re wondering what Joe stole, it was the cure. My boss wasn’t going to give them the cure so they stole it.” Pete had a new person to be mad at. 

“Why wasn’t your boss going to help my friends?” Pete asked angrily. Elliot sighed.

“He wanted to keep the story a secret,” Elliot explained. “I can’t do that. Not to you, your friends, or your fans. I don’t know what will happen now but I hope that cure works.” 

Pete raced to grab his jacket. He needed to find Joe, Andy, and Patrick. He hoped like hell they were okay. He haphazardly threw his jacket on and ran outside. Pete watched his footprints in the snow as he ran to the top of the hill. When he got halfway up the hill, someone ran into his arms, it was Andy. He felt so cold. Pete looked down at him and realized that he was only wearing his sunglasses and a hospital gown. Patrick raced down the hill and enveloped the both of them in one of his signature tight hugs. His hat was laying lopsided atop his head. Joe came down next. He carefully wrapped his arms around his friends. 

When the guys arrived at the research facility, Elliot gave Patrick, Joe, and Andy proper clothing. A few tears of joy were shed until Elliot’s boss came rolling it. The man was in his 60s. He was losing hair by the millisecond and he had a thick jacket like the rest of them. His face contorted in anger when he saw Patrick, Joe, and Andy as humans. 

“Elliot!” he roared. “You weren’t supposed to give Fall Out Boy the cure.” Elliot came in proudly. He didn’t regret his decision one bit. “And you!” Elliot’s boss pointed at Pete. “What are you doing here?” 

“I brought him here for a paid internship,” Elliot said. “I’m the head of this project.” 

“I’m the head of this whole facility and I-” 

“Not after they tell the story. You won’t be head of anything then,” Elliot points out. “I give them permission to leave and I will give them any evidence they need. You won’t get away with what you tried to do.” 

\---  
Pete sat on his couch at home watching the interview over. The interview that caused the firing of a Mr. Ronald Meyer and clearing of Pete’s sort of good name. Those three years amounted to a second hiatus and Fall Out Boy was back in full swing. Joe Trohman, Patrick Stump, and Andy Hurley were back from the dead and Pete couldn’t be happier.


End file.
